I am a water girl through and through. Any chance I get to be near water I will. Beach, lake, bay you name it. In some of my water experiences I have gotten the opportunity to be on a boat. In those times I remember whoever was driving the boat would drop an anchor into the water when it was time to dock the boat. I’m no expert here, but the thing I remember about the anchor is that it was usually heavy and it kept the boat in one place from drifting away with the wind. 

As I picked up my Bible the other day I was reminded again of the power of an anchor for our lives. I was taken to Hebrews 6:19; which says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” I love how this verse refers to hope as an anchor for our soul. As I read this verse through I began to think hope in what though? If we take a look at the verses before this one in context we can see that this hope was referring to God’s unchanging nature. God didn’t change with Abraham, God promised on oath that he would bless him and give him many descendants. Which we can see he did if we go back to Abraham’s story. Then we come to verse 18 which says, “God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.” So our hope lies in that fact that God is unchanging, that he won’t ever lie and that we can be encouraged that if we believe that to be true then the same promises he makes to us, he will accomplish. God will bring about for us just like he did for Abraham. It’s a hope that holds onto a God that is unchanging. It’s this that is our anchor. In a sea of change and uncertainty with all that is going on in our lives, our world and all around us, I don’t know about you, but I need an anchor for my soul.

Verse 19 says that this anchor of hope is firm and secure. With COVID, fires, political and racial unrest, we need something to anchor our soul from going adrift at sea. If we aren’t careful and just listen to the news or social media that is around us, we can find ourselves anchored to what is happening with all of the surging of its ups and downs like waves on a sea. We too then realize that not only do our circumstances feel insecure, so do we and so do our souls. But God offers a different way and invites us into a place of security and a firm foundation for our feet and the deep inner places for our soul to find safety and rest. 

Going back to the boat analogy for a moment, when it is anchored, it may rock around, but it still isn’t going anywhere. The anchor is keeping it rooted to the bottom of the ocean and I believe our anchor of hope, which is God’s unchanging nature and his promise to his Word has the ability to keep us rooted in this sea of uncertainty in which we live. Wherever you may be today, let God anchor you in his hope, in his stability in who He is and trust that He will keep you right where he wants you through all of the waves you see around you. 

The other day the Lord brought to my mind the story of Mary and Joseph right before the birth of Jesus. I began to think about their long journey to get to Bethlehem. How on this journey, they must have been so ready to get to a hotel with a nice bed, take a bath and get ready for this baby to come. Much to their surprise, they arrive at the inn and the innkeeper says to them, “There is no room in the inn.” I can only imagine what Mary and Joseph might have thought and felt in that moment, “What do you mean there is no room in the inn?” This would be like getting to a Hilton and they say, “there is no vacancy tonight.” “No vacancy, how could this be?” Mary could have thought, “how could God do this to us right now?” “He’s God, why wouldn’t he make a way for this hotel to have vacancy for his son to be born?” It’s like in that moment all expectations of what this birth was going to be like were literally obliterated with that one line, “There is no room in the inn.”

So often in life we can face our own, “no room in the inn” moments. We know God has spoken something or believe that it is a God moment and all of our expectations are believing one way only to find out it doesn’t happen at all how we expect. Often in those moments our disappointments can set in and we begin to doubt, “is this really God’s plan?” For Mary and Joseph this wasn’t the first time things didn’t work out how they thought. Even getting pregnant with Jesus before they were married I am sure was not how they were expecting to begin a family. If it’s one thing I’m learning more and more in my walk with God is that he usually does things that are way different from my plan and expectations. It usually also includes many moments of disappointments, disillusionments and lots of questions. Sometimes we think as Christians that we shouldn’t feel the disappointment of having our “first child” in a beautiful clean hotel instead of a stinky barn. Or maybe for you it isn’t a physical child but the birth of your dreams, the plans you had for your life are not what you expected. God is taking too long, it’s not the way it was supposed to be.

How do we take the time to recognize the disappointment and process the loss of expectations? I think we first have to realize that they exist and take a moment to voice our disappointment in the situations that aren’t turning out how we thought. To take those to God and say things like, “Help me through this, I’m angry, upset, this isn’t the way I saw this happening.” The difficulty is that sometimes it can be difficult to not get stuck between the hotel and the barn. Sometimes we can want to camp there too long and stay in a place of doubt and discouragement, by our circumstances not being what we expected. The joy of the birth of Jesus coming I am sure dissipated the disappointment of being in the barn for Mary, but what if our birth is still years away?  If we can fix our eyes on God and what he is still wanting to do in and through us in spite of our difficult situations and disappointments, we will still see God’s plans unfold in great ways in our lives. I will be honest, I often get stuck after the “hotel” not meeting my expectation, or feeling like God has let me down. The interesting thing is that the whole scenario of Jesus’ life was so unconventional and not what people or I am sure anyone expected, but that is what Jesus wanted so it wouldn’t be something we could predict or plan for, but would be a God sized plan. This story can give us a sense of consolation that if you or I feel this way, then we may very well be right on track, right in the will of God, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Your life may feel like it’s happening in a stinky barn, but it’s in that barn that something God sized could be being birthed. Shepherds are miraculously about to show up, God is going to take care of you and I. The imperfections of our situation could be God’s perfect situation to show up in a miraculous way.  I’m not claiming that if you have walked through extreme disappointments that it’s easy, I have in my life too, but I keep thinking if Mary and Joseph could make it then so can I and the joy on the other side of the disappointments will show up at some point if I continue to cling to Jesus. 

Going through hard times is hard. If you are anything like me you would rather skip the hard times and just stay in the good times. I am a visionary by nature and have high expectations of the way things should go in life. I try to envision the best case scenario in each situation that I face and when that situation doesn’t live up to what I envisioned I often get discouraged and disillusioned in the process. If it were up to me I would live in a romcom movie where I could predict the happy ending. Boy gets girl, boy kisses girl and they live happily ever after, but any of us who have lived in this world know that life often doesn’t turn out the way that we think or envision.

I can often feel like God isn’t in the plan anymore or has left me in the process. When the boy doesn’t get the girl or the girl doesn’t get the boy then I can be left with a series of why’s. The same can be said for why does a good God allow bad things to happen to good people. The good news is that God is in the why’s and he’s in our feelings and he too felt the why’s when he lived on this earth yet still continued in the Father’s will. 

When I was growing up like most families had parents who fought and oftentimes it would end with one or both parents leaving or leaving the room, leaving me as a child feeling abandoned in those moments. As an adult this left me with a fear of abandonment. A fear that if things didn’t turn out how I thought then God clearly had left the room and space of my life. Or had he? I began to thumb through my Bible one day for verses that spoke to the abandonment that I felt. What the Bible said went against my belief system that was clearly built from my childhood that God would at some point abandon me. The struggle for me came when I felt bad for believing the abandonment over the truth of God’s word.

One day as I was driving in my car I sensed the Lord speak to me about Feelings vs. Facts. I am a very emotional person who often lives on the basis of feelings. At the same time I often feel bad for my feelings and try to push them away at times. As a “good” Christian I felt like I need to not doubt God or feel disappointed, but as I dug into scripture more I discovered something freeing in this whole process. I realized that the fact or truth in God’s word was saying to me and to us is that God won’t leave or forsake us. That is something we can choose to believe. What I also realized is that we don’t have to forsake or ignore our feelings. When we go through really hard times and question God we can cry out with those feelings to a loving God who wants to help us and remind us that sometimes hard times are part of His will. Jesus when he was at the cross cried out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was completely in God’s will yet still felt forsaken by His Father. That didn’t mean that just because Jesus felt forsaken that he was, or that caused him to get off the cross. Jesus felt the feelings, but continued forward into what God had for Him. He still trusted that God was in it, otherwise he would have gotten off the cross and not died.

Somewhere in the difficulty, in the struggle, in the hard moments Jesus let God the Father into his feelings and still trusted that God was there otherwise why would he even be crying out to him. I’m saying all this to say that there are hard times we will walk through where it won’t be rainbows and sunshine and we will want to give up and question God in the process of those hard times. We all have a cross to bear in this life that will lead us to moments of why’s. To moments where we may feel like God has left us or isn’t in it. If we will continue on, if we will stay on that cross when everything inside of us is saying get out, it’s too hard, it hurts too much, God will be with us and carry us through. We will see God on the cross and the other side of it. We will see His miracles and His plan for our lives unfold. It might not necessarily be the romcom movie we were expecting, but it will be the unexpected adventure that we could maybe never have imagined.

I think we often have this preconceived notion that faith is only for the super spiritual. I believe faith isn’t for some special group of people, but for the weak hearted, the struggling, the fearful, anxious and hopeless; for the people like you and I.

I have heard many sermons on people in the Bible and their great faith, but often what we forget is that their great faith came through or out of great struggle. People have often said to me in different seasons of my life, you are a woman of faith. Maybe it was because I was the crazy girl, who put her notice on her apartment with no place else to live. I was the one who would go to a restaurant with others and wait for God to put it on someone’s heart to cover my meal, because I didn’t have the money to pay. I was also the one that when God said give your computer away and trust God that He would provide another. I did and saw Him provide one even better. I don’t say all these things to make it seem like I am someone super spiritual or that it came easy. What most people don’t know is that this season of faith for finances and trust in what God could provide didn’t come without struggle. Right before this season of faith, I had no consistent paying job, I had gotten sick with no healthcare, I was experiencing extreme spiritual warfare and had become depressed and wanted to give up. It wasn’t until one day as I was driving in my car that God said to me, “Have I ever left you or forsaken you?” I had to come to a place where I realized that I couldn’t deny this statement, when I looked back over my life I couldn’t think of one moment where God had left me. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel discouraged or let down, but I couldn’t say that in the end of past experiences that God had left me or forsaken me even if it felt like he had. I realized that my faith wasn’t based on feelings, it was based on who God is, was and says he is in His word. If Noah would have waited until he felt like building an ark, or when he waited for people’s approval of what he was doing, the ark may have never gotten built. I’m sure there were moments of doubt and discouragement, but I believe these are the moments that he also had to choose to move forward in faith despite his feelings. He simply had to go on what God told him and who God was. 

I am facing a similar season of struggle currently. I had stepped out to write about 6 months ago and found that the moment I began to write, circumstances began to come against me, trials in my family, sickness, fear, discouragement. I wanted to give up completely and all I had done was one blog post. The spiritual warfare beginning this process had made me want to give up many times and never touch it again if I were completely honest. Noah who didn’t give up after the first few months of building the ark, reminded me that I don’t have to either. I’m sure he had setbacks and fear in the process. What if I build this thing and nothing ever happens? I will look like a fool. For me it is what if I write and nothing ever comes of this. I remain some anonymous blog writer or never actually publish anything. What if my writing stinks and doesn’t inspire anyone? OR…what if it does? I believe faith is building the ark in the face of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, doubt and difficult circumstances. It is feeling those things. It is feeling them and then moving ahead even while you feel them. It’s believing that the same God who helped Noah is the same God who will help you and I. It isn’t avoiding the things that bring fear, but doing them in spite and through the fear. It isn’t waiting for the perfect environment or circumstances, it is doing it imperfectly and trusting that God will make a way. It is having the most faithless filled days, months and years and yet still moving forward. My steps of faith might not look like your steps of faith, but the process leading up to these moments could be laden with similarities. My prayer is that it will inspire you that you too can be a person of great faith despite what you may be feeling and where you are. 

When I first moved to the Bay Area I lived on a street where they would have street sweepers who made their rounds once a month. I began to dread every second Friday from 9a.m.-12p.m. I remember one particular day waking up abruptly and remembering it was Friday. I made my best attempt to pry open my eye lids just enough to run out of my house. I failed to care that I was in full pajamas running out my door and down the street yelling loudly at the parking enforcement officer. I begged them not to write me the fifty dollar ticket that I deserved but knew I didn’t have the money to pay. That day was my lucky day, but sad to say not all second Friday’s for me were so lucky. There were other one’s where I came out only to find the ticket smashed between my window and the windshield wiper. I was often upset and felt like I had been targeted, but in reality the parking enforcement officer was really only doing their job and I had been in the wrong. They were using the authority given to them by the city and their boss to issue the tickets. I clearly did not like their particular usage of authority, but in the grand scheme of things if they didn’t do this we may end up with really dirty streets. I’m not an expert at street management but I’m pretty sure there is a greater reason why streets should stay clean consistently. As I did some research I found out that it also protects water resources, prevents floods and removes pollutants that could affect the greater community. In the parking enforcement officer exercising their authority, I realized that it was actually doing a greater good, beyond just giving me a bad day.

God has given you and I authority much like this, not to just give people bad days, but to actually release God’s kingdom into people’s lives. Jesus gave his disciples in the gospels authority to pray, declare healing, release freedom and rebuke demons.  The key word is that He gave it to them. If you are anything like me you may struggle with knowing you have authority and using it. I think the hardest thing at times is to not think that it comes somehow from us. If we continue to be reminded that God has already given us His authority to do the same things He gave to his disciples then we should see these same things happening in our lives, if we are truly exercising our God given authority. Authority isn’t something we access when we feel it or we don’t, it’s more of knowing who we are and what we have been given. Often in the Bible Jesus combined the words “power” and “authority” together in the same sentence. Power by definition refers to the ability to do something; whereas authority is the power to make decisions and give orders. One is ability the other is knowing you have the ability and doing it. Putting the two together results in what we see when the disciples were sent out with power and authority.

I recently heard a message on intimacy with Jesus and the thing that I realized was that close relationship (intimacy) and authority go hand in hand. Jesus went up on mountains to be with the father, to pray and to spend time with Him. It was in these moments, hours, entire nights that Jesus could walk out of those times and know the authority that he was given to him by his father. The thing that I believe we often get wrong is that we try to walk in authority without the close relationship with God. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m simply saying that without that closeness with the father being reminded of who we are and what we have been given, I believe it is easy to forget. We may then mistakenly begin to operate in our own strength and power or greater yet think it comes from us and allow pride to fill our hearts, limiting God and ourselves all at the same time.

Think of what might happen if you and I actually knew and operated in the power and authority given to us by God. Would people actually be healed and set free or would we only hope for a time when that did happen or when it will happen someday? Maybe we would have the faith to believe that we can say a word and it will happen, because we know without doubting to whom has given us this authority. We know it in the quiet moments when he whispers to us and reminds us who we are as sons and daughters. We know our position in him doesn’t change by our lack. We know that we can say the words, “come” and “go” and “be healed”. Not out of pride, but out of the confident security that comes from knowing whose we are and what we have been given.